Weezy and Baby claimed they were kissing to celebrate their collabo album, Like Father Like Son, which was released a few weeks later. Although rappers are usually macho/homophobic, the kiss had surprisingly little effect on Wayne’s career: his rise to the top, culminating in the release of Tha Carter 3 in 2008, progressed unimpeded. After all, what’s wrong with kissing your daddy?

Birdman’s explanation:

Before I had a child, Wayne and all of them were my children,
You heard me? Wayne to me is my son – my first-born son – and
that’s what it do for me. That’s my life, that’s my love and
that’s my thing. That’s my lil' son. I love him to death.

Cute, right? Not for some: Virginia’s finest hustlers, Malice and Pusha T of the Clipse, didn’t buy the fatherly love:

Interviewer: How do you feel about Lil Wayne saying he is the
greatest rapper alive?

Malice: If you Wobble Dee Wobble Dee, you can’t be a legend.

Pusha T: You can’t kiss other men, you can’t wobble dee-wobble dee,
and you can’t bite styles. You
can’t bite everybody’s styles. You
can’t try to rap like Jay-Z, dress
like the Clipse, become a coke dealer
after 5 albums, and now dress like Jim
Jones. You can’t do all that and be a
legend. You have to be a trendsetter
and he ain’t setting any trends…the
streets said he was biting the Clipse.
Clipse never said he was biting us,
because it didn’t really matter to us.
It really don’t matter to us, we have
real issues. Like Weezy fkin Baby
(shakes head); come on man, he’s a
faggot! (laughs)

The editors of Rap Genius, who love the Clipse, feel torn asunder…

But we don’t get emotional. Troof: the picture was taken a few years before it was released. Whether or not Gillie released it, as he claims, or it was Huff Po or Gawker or TMZ – or even Wayne himself – Weezy’s decision to embrace the kiss turned the splotch into a serious come-up.

It’s me, the rapper-eater
Feed me, feed me, feed me
Ahaha no homo

One time for me, one time for the DJ
He be Khaled, I be Lil' Weezy
Baby if you ask me, if your nasty
Creative, gifted bastards, spit sporadic
I’m so diplomatic/democratic
Touch it, bring it, push it systematic

Damn right, I kissed my Daddy
I think they pissed at how rich my Daddy is
And I’m his kid, I stunt with my Daddy
Call Ms Lee, she with my Daddy
So diss me, and don’t diss my Daddy
Cause who was there when no one wasn’t?
Just my Daddy! Who was there when I needed money?
Just my Daddy! So who be there when I see the money?
Just my Daddy! Who said that I’d be the one?
Just my Daddy! Hello Hip-Hop, I’m home
It’s your Daddy…

Me, me
It’s all about ME
If a girl got a voice then she talk bout ME (me)
He say, she say, I say ME…

Boy, I don’t know what y'all bout
But I just spit like a dog mouth
Big ice been looking like a hog mouth
(Vroom!) I had to bring the hog out
Light them trees, bring a log out
Every day, Christmas, I’m egg-nogged out
And Hip-Hop is my new bought house
My flow just grew legs and walked out (bye)

That’s right, he kissed his Daddy! Chillax…

On the other hand – no homophobo – very few fathers kiss their sons on the lips (mine did…but it felt pretty gay)

But he’s Wayne ok? He’s the Poetic Genius of the Modern Age; he doesn’t even have a gender, much less an orientation. Wayne is a goblin: an alien of language existing in a sphere above class, above race, and – yes! – above gender (which explains the Whoopi Goldberg-lookalike situation…)